


Reprieve

by Valentined



Series: Pieces of Valentine [6]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Immortality is Awful, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-Post-Post-Canon, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28208415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valentined/pseuds/Valentined
Summary: If he does it again, maybe it will work. Maybe he won't be stuck here, maybe he won't have to be alone. He just has to do it again.(And again, and again, and again.)
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough & Vincent Valentine
Series: Pieces of Valentine [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1485986
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	Reprieve

“It sounds nice,” she says, smiling. “I can see a little, I can tell it’s all right, but it’s…nice to know, to hear it from someone who is still out there to see it up close.”

He makes a low noise of affirmation; his head resting in her lap, tilted slightly back as she runs slim fingers through his thick, dark hair, he doesn’t want to nod and ruin the moment. It’s so rare, after all. “It isn’t as if I spend a great deal of time in public anymore,” he elaborates, “but I can still get close enough to check, to make sure things are going well.”

She makes a little noise that might be a laugh, but it’s so subdued it’s hard to be certain. “And if it’s not going well, you handle it.”

“Of course,” he replies softly. “Who else could? Things aren’t…the same anymore. There’s no one like you or the others anymore. Nothing like me.” He closes his eyes and exhales slowly. “It’s the only responsible option, considering.”

She’s quiet for a moment, the slow ministrations of her hand trailing off until she’s just gently resting her fingers in place, close to his unbroken hairline—this isn’t what he looks like anymore, but it’s how this place remembers him, so it’s how it is here. He’s grateful, if only because he doesn’t know that he wants her to see him now, doesn’t know if she’d let him this close if she saw the horror story of a body that he’s trapped in.

“Would you change it? If you could go back, if you could…try again. Do it differently.” Her voice is gentle, curious. There’s no accusation there, for which he’s also grateful. “Would you?”

He thinks, closing his eyes against the searing white around him, turning the question over and over in his mind. Once, his answer would have been an emphatic and instantaneous affirmation. Now, he’s not so sure.

If he had the opportunity to go back and undo what he’d done, to do what he didn’t do, the world would be very different. Possibly unrecognizable. There’s no telling if it would be for the better, no way of knowing if that single change would have been enough to keep certain events from coming to pass; part of him insists that there’s nowhere things could turn but up, that things could only be better in comparison to how they were back then, how they are now, but he’s seen enough now to know that in life—and even in death—there are so few certainties.

It couldn’t possibly be worse. Different, perhaps, but worse? How could it possibly have been worse than what he’d experienced, the trials they faced together, the losses they all suffered alone?

And yet, if he had the chance to change things, he probably never would have met them at all. Would their lives have been better without the events that led to their meeting? The knowledge that they were out there somewhere—or at least would be someday, they were so much younger than him, came into the hell he’d created so much later—would probably have been enough for him. Probably.

“I think…”His voice is smoother, softer than it should be no, softer than it has been in so long. “I think that, as long as they were happy, I wouldn’t mind.”

He’s said those words before, held that sentiment before. The last time he’d stepped back and allowed someone he loved to live her life on her own terms, mistakes and all, had gone so badly that it all but ended the world. If it had been for _them_ , though, not for _her_ , he knew it would have been the right decision. He just isn’t sure it’s the decision he would actually make.

He’s been alone for so long now, he’s so tired, he knows that he would give anything to get them all back. He’d give his right arm, the one with fingers that aren’t tipped in inky black claws, the one that hasn’t been slowly shifting in shade and structure for centuries, the one that lacks the jagged visual landscape of black torn into icy blue from knuckle to shoulder. The one that still looks human.

“But I don’t know,” he continues after a moment. “I always think I would, but I don’t know anymore.” He’s spent so long without them, the prospect of them all being alive and content somewhere away from him, present but forever out of reach, isn’t one he’s certain he could face.

She closes her eyes, brushing back his wild hair from his pale face, his head still cradled in her lap. “I don’t think I would either,” she murmurs, her soft voice tinged with melancholy.

A long moment passes in silence.

“You can’t keep doing this,” she says at last.

“I miss them,” he replies. “I miss _you._ ”

“I know you do,” she whispers in return. She leans low over him, putting her forehead to his, bright eyes still closed as her auburn curls fall over the sides of her face and his like curtains closing over a theatrical performance, hiding the aftermath of the tragedy from prying eyes as the stage lights go dark. “I’m so sorry, Vincent.”

“It isn’t fair.” There’s a tremor when he speaks, the barest hint of a crack in this voice that hasn’t been his in more years than either of them can process. “I know I made a mistake, I know what I did wrong—I’ve done everything I can to make up for it.” He closes his eyes, but it’s more like a wince than anything else. “I keep hoping it’s enough, that it will work this time, but I—”

She fits her hands against the sides of his face and gently shakes her head. “You’re not being punished,” she says firmly. “You should know that by now.” When he opens his mouth to speak, she cuts him off again. “I know it’s hard to remember that, especially after this long. I _know_. But it’s just the way things are. Neither of us can change it.”

Again, he’s quiet for what feels like a very long time. “But you’re still here,” he whispers. “You’ll be here, won’t you?”

She pulls away enough to smile down at him. Her eyes are open now, deep green and full of tears. “We have our roles to play,” she says, but it’s not an affirmation. “And you can’t keep doing this.”

“It’s the only way I can see you,” he responds, as if the fact is obvious. “It’s the only way I can see _anyone_.”

“No.” Her voice is firm again. “You have to stop doing this. I’ll always be here, but _you_ shouldn’t be. You can’t.” She shakes her head again, just slightly, just enough to make the curls in her hair bob. “I can’t pull you out every time—you’ll be there while everything comes back together, you’ll feel it all. I will be here, but I can’t risk you suffering through that just for the chance to see a friendly face. Not when there’s a whole world out there, full of thousands and millions of people.”

Now he reaches up, brushing his hands—matched here, twins in size and color and structure—over her cheeks. “But none of them are you.”

She puts her hands over his. “No. None of them are me.” She closes her eyes again, and the tears fall as she squeezes with her slender fingers. “I’m sorry, Vincent. It’s time to wake up.”

In a flash of light and pain he jerks awake; Vincent coughs and chokes and rolls over to spit up shards of lead. Cerberus is still close at hand, triple barrels long cold and spattered with a dry spray of crimson-marbled black. He pushes himself up, head screaming in pain as he gropes out for the gun with his good hand. The motion to holster it is automatic, so deeply seated it’s practically instinctive, independent of the way he reaches up to run oversized, claw-tipped fingers through his ragged black hair. It had barely grown back from last time, and already…

Aerith is right.

Vincent curls up on his front, struggling to put himself back in order, to process through recently regenerated synapses and grey matter, electrical impulses taking a familiar but frustratingly long period to get back up to speed.

The first time had been desperation, a moment of weakness where the crystalline weight gleaming behind his ribs and the pain in his chest grew too heavy to bear, and he hoped for something he knew to be impossible.

The second time had been for study, and with it he learned a great deal—how long it took to completely regenerate from his jaw upward, how long he spent floating in that warm white place where the final vestige of his only remaining friend was always waiting to hold him, to whisper apologies and affirmations in his ears, to tell them what it had been like for the others, to make sure that he knew they had been all right when they finally drifted out into the stream for good.

The third had been nothing more than a burning need to see her again, to see someone who knew him and loved him and wasn’t afraid. Someone who understood who and what he was, what he’d done, and why he was so very, very tired.

He can’t say how many times he’s done this since then, since the discovery that she is always there and that she’ll be there until the planet comes apart, until the monster in his blood comes awake at long last and maybe—just maybe—finally _lets him go_.

The story of the man who called Meteor down has fallen into legend, and the stories of those who stood against him even moreso. Memories fade, stories are lost, statues wear down. After hundreds, thousands of years, everything is just a fairytale.

And the monster that used to be Vincent Valentine—with his horns and sharp teeth and little half-formed stumps that will undoubtedly one day be wings pushing out the back of his cloak—is so very, very tired. He squeezes the grip on his gun, part of him still wondering if repetition will fix it, if trying again and again will eventually wear this horrible body of his down until it gives out for good.

He snaps the strap into place to lock Cerberus into the holster on his thigh, and pushes himself to his feet.

Aerith is right.

“Just a reprieve,” he murmurs to himself. Of course it’s to himself, it’s been so long since there was anyone else, who else could he be talking to?

His body aches, his head hurts, his glowing eyes sting as he moves toward the mouth of the cave. His clothes are ragged, stained over decades with marbled red and black in layers and familiar spatter patterns. The world outside is bright and alive, and it terrifies him.

It’s been so long, too long, how much longer could it take?

“She’s watching,” he breathes, voice too deep, too rough, an inhuman rumble that he can’t stop echoing up with it from somewhere deep in his chest, “but she’s right. No more.”

No more seeing her, hearing her voice, feeling her hand on his skin—no more hands on his skin at all, ever again, he’s changed too much and he’ll just keep changing. No more hours and days in that warm, white place just this side of the wall that keeps him from the Lifestream. No more hoping that this will be the time he’s finally allowed to pass through like everyone else, to see his friends again, the people he loves, the children he helped to raise all those ages ago.

No more.

“You have to do this alone.”

Vincent steps into the daylight.


End file.
